A retailer, who wants to remain competitive, must carry and display as many items per unit of floor area as he can reasonably and attractively fit. He does not want his customers to go down the street, where a competitor, with no larger display area than he has, is able to show a greater variety of items or more items of a given variety. The way to best utilize the floor area taken up by standard shelving units, or gondolas, is not only to stack items on top of each shelf surface, but to display them vertically, extending along and across the outside edges of the shelving units.
This invention is such a system for mounting and display in a consumer setting, which utilizes the vertical area between the shelves of a standard gondola and allows a merchandiser to best utilize his display area through the use of a bracket assembly and a specially designed container back wall, which can be fashioned for a variety of display containers. This system can conveniently increase, manyfold, the number of items he can show. While the idea of a vertical display system is not novel, this invention, and the particular elements which comprise the system, are an improvement over the prior art in several respects. The use of a bracket assembly mounted over the edge of a shelf is known in the art of merchandising display, but the best system prior to the present invention suffers from shortcomings and inconveniences which have been eliminated by the present invention.
Perhaps the most annoying aspect of the prior art device is the sheer number of parts required to set up the system and the correlative labor required for installation. Just to properly attach the bracket assembly to the shelf edge and prepare it for receiving the display container requires the tightening and securing of two hex nuts and bolts and one thumbscrew. Then the display container has to be prepared by placing a wire hook assembly into holes in its back wall. Finally, before the display container may be mounted onto the bracket assembly, a crossbar, used as a mounting support for the display container, must be levelled and securely tightened into the other components of the bracket assembly.
By contrast, the only external fastening device in the present invention is the wing nut and bolt union. Since the component parts of the present system are all designed to be integrated with each other, by means of projections from--and complementary openings in--the various elements, whereby they slide neatly into each to interlock, there is no need for anything but the simple bolt and wing nut to fasten them all securely.
Even more innovative, perhaps, is the improvement made in the design of the display container back wall itself. No time or effort need be taken to prepare the display container for mounting, either in terms of fussing with the crossbar or prior installation of the wire hook assembly into the container back. By virtue of a specially designed opening in the back wall, which is an element of the complete system in the present invention, the container is simply placed in the appropriate position over the complementary projection from the mounting plate, pulled down vertically into the slots behind this projection, and "mated" with the bracket assembly.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a display system with fewer component elements than has previously been possible, and one, therefore, which is easier to assemble.
It is another object of this invention to have the various elements of a display system be fashioned in a design whereby they may all be fitted together without the need for numerous external fastening devices.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a bracket assembly in which the component parts are removably joined together in a manner which allows for the use of this invention with shelves of different dimensions.
It is further an object of this invention to provide, as an element of the display system, a display case back wall design, usable with display cases of various dimensions, which, by virtue of its inherent shape, can mate securely with the other elements of the system, without the need for the installation of external hooks or level crossbars.
It is still further an object of this invention to provide a display system whereby the simple, proper placement of the display container into the slots provided for it in the mounting plate of the bracket assembly ensures that the container will be locked in the proper horizontal and vertical alignment for display, relative to the shelf surface.
Other and further objects, advantages and features of my invention will become more readily apparent from the following description, especially when taken in conjunction with the various drawings, in which: